Previous Courses and Events

How do we use organising strategically in our activism and movement building? How do we develop a practice of transformative organising, from organising in silos to building long term alignments, from fighting short term campaigns to advancing a long-term agenda, from applying narrow approaches to power to an expansive one, from protesting from the outside to building governing power? This training designed and delivered by the European Community Organising Network (ECON) and part of the Ulex Programme will help you address some of these challenges by developing your competencies for Transformative Organising.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

Aquest matí d'activitats al Centre Cultural de Bellvitge-Gornal, a Barcelona, amb el poeta Mario Obrero i l’activista i historiadora Sònia Turón, reunirà la memòria històrica i la poesia com a potències creadores de noves narratives emancipadores i formes de resistència. Explorarem preguntes com: Com nodrim la imaginació radical? Com podem il·lusionar-nos per a l'acció col·lectiva solidària? Com impulsar i desenvolupar somnis col·lectius dignes de ser viscuts?

This training provides a space for deeper reflection and analysis on the specificities of CEE socio-political history and the ways this shapes movement building, activism and pedagogical support for capacity building. This training is semi-open for trainers and organisers involved in training activities and practice in the region, interested in engaging in this kind of deeper reflection and analysis. It provides opportunity to analyse and reflect on their current praxis in context of the region, what works and what we need to rethink.

Activists, human rights defenders, and political organisers can suffer attacks at the hands of both State and non-State actors seeking to hinder their work. This damages our effectiveness and the wellbeing of ourselves and those around us. Such attacks can deter and hinder efforts towards greater social justice and ecological integrity. This training offers methods of analysis, strategy and implementation to protect spaces for activism and resistance.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. The workshop is specifically designed to address needs, issues and challenges that BIPOC activists face in their work and lives.

This course draws on our longer Ecology of Social Movements Training - redesigned as a week-long course adapted to the context of Central and Eastern Europe. A training for experienced activists and organisers involved in movement level thinking and practice. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and ecology. They will gain skills and understanding to make their activism and organising more powerful and transformative.

Resilience is all about connection: Deeper connection with our self, deeper connections with each other, and deeper connection with nature. Today we face immense challenges – social, ecological and political. We can be daunted by the scale and extent of the problems. We can feel overwhelmed and undermined. Where can we find the resilience and strength needed to meet them?

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

Change is multi-layered. The social field, our organisational cultures, and the individuals within them arise in mutual dependence upon each other. Integral Activist Training supports integrated transformation on all of these levels. Integral Activist Training builds this awarenss into the way we do activist education.

This training is about making our action count. It shares key tools and helps build skills for developing effective and responsive strategies. Using a hands-on and applied-experiential learning method, participants will learn to analyse contexts, create vision, identify opportunities and challenges, and develop responsive plans to move towards their objectives. At this crucial time for our social movements, the need for focused, well-crafted, and well-informed strategies couldn’t be more important.

Effective strategies for social transformation involve the contest for how we think, how we see, and the stories we tell about our world. New stories, new thinking, help new worlds come into being. This training aims to help our movements to tell better stories for a different world.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

A training for experienced activists and organisers involved in movement level thinking and practice. An opportunity to inquire deeply into how our organisations and networks relate to the wider ecology of our movements – and how these movements relate to wider struggles in the ever changing cultural, socio-political and ecological context. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and ecology. They will gain skills and understanding to make their activism and organising more powerful and transformative.

This Training of Trainers aims to support LGBTQI+ activists who want to grow as activist-trainers or want to step into trainer roles and use holistic methods of education and facilitation for activists and change makers. Integral Activist Training is holistic, transformative, participatory and embodies solidarity.

This training will share a framework for Leaderful Organising. It includes practices and understanding that can help organisations and groups to distribute power and leadership effectively. It offers an approach that addresses two related issues: the problems of leadership, that can lead to entrenched power interests, poor accountability, disempowerment, and traditional hierarchical structures, and; the problems of leaderlessness, where social movements and organisations, rejecting leadership adopt ‘horizontal’ structures in ways that can lack direction, continuity, and coherence.

We hear a lot about fragmentation within our movements and about the need to make them more diverse, inclusive, and empowering. We know that there are deep challenges involved in overcoming forms of oppression, such as racism, patriarchy, or ableism, which can often be reproduced within our movements themselves. This training aims to help us explore these challenges and to develop practices and strategies to build diverse movements capable of embodying active solidarity,and mutual empowerment.

Activists, human rights defenders, and political organisers across Central and Eastern Europe work and operate in a hostile climate. Conservatism, misogyny, economic scarcity and rise of the far right are only a few of the threats they face. This impacts our own and collective wellbeing, as well as our effectiveness, and, especially in the long run, it can deter and hinder efforts towards greater social, ecological and economic justice.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

This training will help you to learn the know-how of building more inclusive and empowering environments for activism and social change work. Applying knowledge, frameworks and concepts used in anti-oppression work, we'll explore ways to deal with discrimination and oppression at the individual, organizational and systemic levels - learning how to understand our struggles through the lens of intersectionality.

This strand will offer methods, basic skills, frameworks and tools for transforming and dealing with conflicts, turning them into opportunities for deeper understanding and learning. We’ll learn how to support the building of shared understanding, how to access emotions and inner experience, to hold such spaces more safely, and attend to the healing involved in handling conflict.

This training will help organisations to put in place practices and structures that will support sustainable and effective collaboration. Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, power conflicts arise, chaos reigns and all this gets in the way of achieving what the group or organization set out to do at the beginning. All of this becomes harder when faced with additional pressures such as financial resourcing or political hostility. We’ll draw on Ulex Transformative Collaboration training and adapt the curriculum to address specific challenges faced by organisations in Central and Eastern Europe.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

Effective strategies for social transformation involve the contest for how we think, how we see, and the stories we tell about our world. New stories, new thinking, help new worlds come into being. This training aims to help our movements to tell better stories for a different world.

We will be exploring the key challenge we hear again and again across our movements: that our movements lack the capacity to develop longer term and responsive strategies for deep social transformation. Social change is highly complex, as are social movements themselves, and strategising at this level requires more than simply upscaling the tools we might use for individual organisations and campaigns. We’ll look for responses to this challenge by drawing on case studies, and exploring skillsets and tools for strategizing at scale and amidst volatile and unpredictable conditions.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

How do we use organising strategically in our activism and movement building? How do we develop a practice of transformative organising, from organising in silos to building long term alignments, from fighting short term campaigns to advancing a long-term agenda, from applying narrow approaches to power to an expansive one, from protesting from the outside to building governing power? This training designed and delivered by the European Community Organising Network (ECON) and part of the Ulex Programme will help you address some of these challenges by developing your competencies for Transformative Organising.

This training will help you to learn the know-how of building more inclusive and empowering environments for activism and social change work. Applying knowledge, frameworks and concepts used in anti-oppression work, we'll explore ways to deal with discrimination and oppression at the individual, organizational and systemic levels - learning how to understand our struggles through the lens of intersectionality.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

This training is about making our action count. It shares key tools and helps build skills for developing effective and responsive strategies. Using a hands-on and applied-experiential learning method, participants will learn to analyse contexts, create vision, identify opportunities and challenges, and develop responsive plans to move towards their objectives. At this crucial time for our social movements, the need for focused, well-crafted, and well-informed strategies couldn’t be more important.

Change is multi-layered. The social field, our organisational cultures, and the individuals within them arise in mutual dependence upon each other. Integral Activist Training supports integrated transformation on all of these levels. Integral Activist Training builds this awarenss into the way we do activist education.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

A training for experienced activists and organisers involved in movement level thinking and practice. An opportunity to inquire deeply into how our organisations and networks relate to the wider ecology of our movements – and how these movements relate to wider struggles in the ever changing cultural, socio-political and ecological context. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and ecology. They will gain skills and understanding to make their activism and organising more powerful and transformative.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

Activists, human rights defenders, and political organisers can suffer attacks at the hands of both State and non-State actors seeking to hinder their work. This damages our effectiveness and the wellbeing of ourselves and those around us. Such attacks can deter and hinder efforts towards greater social justice and ecological integrity. This training offers methods of analysis, strategy and implementation to protect spaces for activism and resistance.

This training explores skills and understanding needed to sustain and consolidate our movements. It offers new thinking and learning for fresh approaches to leadership. On the one hand, this needs to provide a clear critique of classical models of leadership (authoritarian, top-down and often bestowed with patriarchal tendencies). On the other hand, it needs to address the pitfalls recognised in what Jo Freeman described as a “tyranny of structurelessness”, where informal power still is unequal and groups become without clear direction, accountability or viable strategy.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

This week long event will bring together a group of richly talented facilitators and practitioners to share and explore creative tools that can be used in a variety of social change settings. It will take a cross/multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on theatre, story, image, dance, and music – and apply these to community empowerment, campaign development, and direct action.

This Training for Trainers aims to support trainers, facilitators and educators who want to use nature-based and eco-systemic approaches of education and facilitation for activists and change makers seeking to empower defence of the earth and struggles for social justice. Those of us who practice such work know how deeply transformative it can be and how it can offer insight, healing, connection and deep shifts in perspective. What can we do to make it more effective and powerful as a stimulus and support to social and ecological action and the deeper transformations needed? For those of us facilitating social and political change making, how do we weave a more embedded, participatory and ecological understanding into our work? And how do we ensure that when working with these ecological and nature-based modalities we don’t inadvertently repeat the patterns of harm we’re trying to change?

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

This training strengthens the ability to act and strategize in ways that are most aligned with values rooted in solidarity

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. The workshop is specifically designed to address needs, issues and challenges that BIPOC activists face in their work and lives.

This year-long+ programme aims to respond to the key challenges movements and organisations are facing in Europe, from fragmentation, persistent divisions within and between movements, and a lack of movement capacity for longer-term and coherent strategy. It aims to nurture the interconnected movements and responsive strategies needed to challenge the interlocking systems of oppression we face today.

A workshop-lab for socio-ecological change practitioners, educators, and trainers seeking to empower defence of the earth and struggles for social justice, hosted near Kóln, Germany. As we witness the global system of industrial growth-based production collide with non-negotiable ecological limits, the need for collective action in defence of the earth and social justice has never been clearer. We are interested in how nature connection, ecopsychology, and ecological education can all play a part. Those of us who practice such work know how deeply transformative it can be and how it can offer insight, healing, connection and deep shifts in perspective. What can we do to make it more effective and powerful as a stimulus and support to social and ecological action? And how do we ensure that when working with these ecological and nature-based modalities we don’t inadvertently repeat the patterns of harm we’re trying to change? Join us on this part-training, part lab to find out.

Activists, human rights defenders, and political organisers can suffer attacks at the hands of both State and non-State actors seeking to hinder their work. This damages our effectiveness and the wellbeing of ourselves and those around us. Such attacks can deter and hinder efforts towards greater social justice and ecological integrity. This training offers methods of analysis, strategy and implementation to protect spaces for activism and resistance.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

This training is about making our action count. It shares key tools and helps build skills for developing effective and responsive strategies - and to help our movements to tell better stories for a different world. It involves two strands of learning: Strategy Training and Narrative & Framing Training.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in agile and decentralised approaches to self-organising structures. Drawing on systems thinking, information theory, and notions of agility, these approaches have revolutionised practice in traditional organisations from public sector institutions to corporations and businesses. Are those of us working for social change actually falling behind? What can we learn from these approaches that can be harnessed to the values we want to embody? How can we better design our organisations for resilience, agility, and impact? This training is hosted as part of the Ulex South Project.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

Built around the core of our Ecology of Social Movement training, this training is for experienced activists and organisers involved in movement thinking and practice from across Europe. We’ll inquire deeply into how our organisations and networks relate to the wider ecology of activism within our movements – and how these movements relate to wider struggles in the ever changing cultural, socio-political and ecological context. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and movement ecology. They will have opportunities to gain skills and understanding related to contemporary practices in transversal and transnational movement building. It can also be taken as part of a 12-18 month long Movement Learning Catalyst Programme..

Tools for social movement resilience and economic literacy. This training is hosted as part of the Ulex South Project.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

Resilience is all about connection: Deeper connection with our self, deeper connections with each other, and deeper connection with nature. Today we face immense challenges – social, ecological and political. We can be daunted by the scale and extent of the problems. We can feel overwhelmed and undermined. Where can we find the resilience and strength needed to meet them?

This training explores skills and understanding needed to sustain and consolidate our movements. It offers new thinking and learning for fresh approaches to leadership. On the one hand, this needs to provide a clear critique of classical models of leadership (authoritarian, top-down and often bestowed with patriarchal tendencies). On the other hand, it needs to address the pitfalls recognised in what Jo Freeman described as a “tyranny of structurelessness”, where informal power still is unequal and groups become without clear direction, accountability or viable strategy.

Diversity, power and participation in migrant solidarity work. This course is for people working in social and migrant solidarity work. For people from countries of origin of migration and receiving countries, people migrating, and asylum seekers. People campaigning and/or working in policy change.

This training will help you to learn the know-how of building more inclusive and empowering environments for activism and social change work. Applying knowledge, frameworks and concepts used in anti-oppression work, we'll explore ways to deal with discrimination and oppression at the individual, organizational and systemic levels - learning how to understand our struggles through the lens of intersectionality.

Change is multi-layered. The social field, our organisational cultures, and the individuals within them arise in mutual dependence upon each other. Integral Activist Training supports integrated transformation on all of these levels. Integral Activist Training builds this awarenss into the way we do activist education.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. The workshop is specifically designed to address needs, issues and challenges that BIPOC activists face in their work and lives.

This course offers tools, frameworks and practical skills to increase the ability to adapt effectively in changing times and builds capacity for leadership and collaboration from the perspective of ecosystem awareness.  This training is hosted as part of the Ulex South Project.

This Training of Trainers aims to support transgender activist who want to grow as activist-trainers or want to step into trainer roles and use holisitic methods of education and facilitation for activists and change makers.

A training for experienced activists and organisers involved in movement level thinking and practice. An opportunity to inquire deeply into how our organisations and networks relate to the wider ecology of our movements – and how these movements relate to wider struggles in the ever changing cultural, socio-political and ecological context. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and ecology. They will gain skills and understanding to make their activism and organising more powerful and transformative.

A feeling of disempowerment, being deprived of our collective power and personal power often puts limitations on our actions and bringing the best of ourselves into the world. This course is a an opportunity to look for ways of empowerment that invites connection and respect for others, and in the same time enables us to stay engaged and rooted in our desires and aims as well as with our communities and groups.

In our work for social change it is crucial that we develop the capacity to embody our values between us, to develop skills for mutual empowerment and inclusion, to transform conflict and to empower our efforts of collaborative transformation. This training is structured around core elements of our Transformative Collaboration training, with participants choosing to focus on strands covering: Transformative Collaboration; Anti-Oppression and the creation of spaces for empowered inclusion; Conflict transformation; and Mindfulness for social change.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

Participation is sometimes experienced as an added extra to enhance a programme or project, or a burden that slows down development, however, it is not participation itself that should be questioned but the approaches, methods, skills and moments in which it is used that we need to consider and get better at. This course aims to share theories, approaches and methodologies to integrate systemic and participatory processes into all stages of our work from research and analysis of the problem to project design and undertaking actions or campaigns capable of adapting to changes in an inclusive quick and efficient manner.

This week long event will bring together a group of richly talented facilitators and practitioners to share and explore creative tools that can be used in a variety of social change settings. It will take a cross/multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on theatre, story, image, dance, and music – and apply these to community empowerment, campaign development, and direct action. There will be a key strand exploring Theatre of the Oppressed as a potent tool in the facilitation of group work, community empowerment, and the holding of liberatory conversations.

This training is about making our action count. It shares key tools and helps build skills for developing effective and responsive strategies. Using a hands-on and applied-experiential learning method, participants will learn to analyse contexts, create vision, identify opportunities and challenges, and develop responsive plans to move towards their objectives. At this crucial time for our social movements, the need for focused, well-crafted, and well-informed strategies couldn’t be more important.

Built around the core of our Ecology of Social Movement training, this training is for experienced activists and organisers involved in movement thinking and practice from across Europe. We’ll inquire deeply into how our organisations and networks relate to the wider ecology of activism within our movements – and how these movements relate to wider struggles in the ever changing cultural, socio-political and ecological context. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and ecology. They will have opportunities to gain skills and understanding related to contemporary practices in community and political organising, as well as current developments in municipalist organising.

This is a week-long community of inquiry for BIPoC activist trainers, hosted by BIPoC facilitators. We’ll collectively explore ways to address the needs, issues and challenges that people identifying as BIPoC face in their activism, and to better support them in training spaces. Participants will collectively help to shape and deliver a rich and creative program, based on the needs and ideas that emerge from the group; sharing experiences and knowledge, and modelling different ways to hold space and navigate the complexity of these experiences.

Part residency, part workshop; this is a creative space for international artists and change makers. We will learn, reflect, create and explore how to make visible to ‘an everyday audience’ the human and environmental catastrophe of industrial food systems. This training is hosted as part of the Ulex South Project.

Effective strategies for social transformation involve the contest for how we think, how we see, and the stories we tell about our world. New stories, new thinking, help new worlds come into being. This training aims to help our movements to tell better stories for a different world.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

A relational and emergent practice for social change work. This course explores moving away from automatic responses focusing solely on results, rather than process, on plans rather than response, on doing rather than observing. We’ll learn to methods for observing the processes of life and nature where actions are not guided by linear pre-planned processes and/or undertaken by management teams; but instead are emerging responses from constant interactions amongst the people involved. This training is hosted as part of the Ulex South Project

This training will help you to learn the know-how of building more inclusive and empowering environments for activism and social change work. Applying knowledge, frameworks and concepts used in anti-oppression work, we'll explore ways to deal with discrimination and oppression at the individual, organizational and systemic levels - learning how to understand our struggles through the lens of intersectionality.

This training explores skills and understanding needed to sustain and consolidate our movements. It offers new thinking and learning for fresh approaches to leadership. On the one hand, this needs to provide a clear critique of classical models of leadership (authoritarian, top-down and often bestowed with patriarchal tendencies). On the other hand, it needs to address the pitfalls recognised in what Jo Freeman described as a “tyranny of structurelessness”, where informal power still is unequal and groups become without clear direction, accountability or viable strategy.

Reframing and enabling leadership for social transformation: This course aims to build skills to leverage the capacity of self awareness, response-ability and empowerment amongst people in social movements involved in uncertain and rapidly changing contexts. This training is hosted as part of the Ulex South Project

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

This training explores skills and understanding needed to sustain and consolidate our movements. It offers new thinking and learning for fresh approaches to leadership and active solidarity.

Diversity, power and participation in migrant solidarity work. This course is for people working in social and migrant solidarity work. For people from countries of origin of migration and receiving countries, people migrating, and asylum seekers. People campaigning and/or working in policy change.

This course draws on our longer Ecology of Social Movements Training - redesigning it as a week-long course. A training for experienced activists and organisers involved in movement level thinking and practice. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and ecology. They will gain skills and understanding to make their activism and organising more powerful and transformative.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in agile and decentralised approaches to self-organising structures. Drawing on systems thinking, information theory, and notions of agility, these approaches have revolutionised practice in traditional organisations from public sector institutions to corporations and businesses. Are those of us working for social change actually falling behind? What can we learn from these approaches that can be harnessed to the values we want to embody? How can we better design our organisations for resilience, agility, and impact? This training is hosted as part of the Ulex South Project.

As a result of travel restrictions and other factors, our spring and summer programme has been postponed. You'll find the postponed courses listed with dates to be confirmed. We'll update the new dates early in 2022. We'll also monitor the situation and will be updating our scheduling each month looking four months ahead (e.g. we will decide in July whether we think it is viable to go ahead with events in November and so on).

A 4 month online training offering a range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

This week long event will bring together a group of richly talented facilitators and practitioners to share and explore creative tools that can be used in a variety of social change settings. It will take a cross/multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on theatre, story, image, dance, and music – and apply these to community empowerment, campaign development, and direct action.

Mindfulness is about being fully present in the here and now, being in touch with what is going on inside us and around us. It enables us to arrive in a place of centred awareness – able to be responsive and connected, to engage courageously and effectively in the world. On this training we seek to harness the empowering skills of mindfulness to values and action for social and ecological justice.

Activists, human rights defenders, and political organisers can suffer attacks at the hands of both State and non-State actors seeking to hinder their work. This damages our effectiveness and the wellbeing of ourselves and those around us. Such attacks can deter and hinder efforts towards greater social justice and ecological integrity. This training offers methods of analysis, strategy and implementation to protect spaces for activism and resistance.

Having learnt lessons from the crash our movement experienced in the post-COP15 fallout, we now hear more about sustainable activism, regenerative organising and resilience within the climate justice world. But what does this mean in practice? How can our groups and organisations integrate these practices and perspectives effectively? As our movement grows, how will we avoid the failures and errors of the past? How will we build a massive movement that is truly regenerative and resilient enough to see this through?

This course draws on our longer Ecology of Social Movements Training - redesigning it as a week-long course. A training for experienced activists and organisers involved in movement level thinking and practice. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and ecology. They will gain skills and understanding to make their activism and organising more powerful and transformative.

Theatre of the Oppressed is a potent tool in the facilitation of group work, community empowerment, and the holding of liberatory conversations. This training will enable you to explore the forms and tools, get skilled-up and confident in applying them, and to share them with others.

Community organising brings people together to take collective action on their shared concerns. Starting from local problems and everyday injustices, it has the potential to strengthen people’s sense of agency, build solidarity, and foster leaderful communities. We’ll explore how politicisation can build from action on local concerns to the mobilising of new constituencies seeking radical structural transformation.

The Social Permaculture course will explore permaculture as a tool for designing communities and organisations. It will help you to understand things in terms of connection – between people, economies, and governing structures – and how to create the conditions for humans to flourish on a societal level, as well as how to develop beneficial relationships with the ecosystems which sustain us.

Bringing together Climate Justice organisers from across Europe, to share, learn, and strategise together. At a time of growing movement power and shifting narratives, space for reflection and analysis are crucial for the climate justice movement to make the most of opportunities and strategies to overcome new challenges. More than ever we need to be fighting to win and build a massive movement for climate justice.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

Building on Theatre of the Oppressed training, this course is designed to enrich and enhance participants confidence, experience and abilities with Boal's method of theatre and therapy – the Rainbow of Desire – and the opportunity to analyse, deconstruct and embody the central and enigmatic role of the Joker.

Many people involved in socially engaged work – activism, human rights defence, and political organising – encounter violence and repression, and the accumulative influence of stresses. This can exert a strong influence on our wellbeing, our work and lives. Knowing how to work well with trauma, to transform, mitigate and grow beyond it, can be crucial for the longevity of our activism and our groups.

Change is multi-layered. The social field, our organisational cultures, and the individuals within them arise in mutual dependence upon each other. Integral Activist Training supports integrated transformation on all of these levels. Integral Activist Training builds this awarenss into the way we do activist education.

Due to high levels of interest, we're running this training twice in October 2019. A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

Embodying our values in our groups and organisations can involve facing deep challenges in relation to anti-oppression practices and honouring diversity. People facilitating group processes and holding spaces for others need additional support to explore and understand the dynamics involved, and to learn practices and approaches that can help our groups to meet these challenges in ways that are creative and empowering.

This course draws on our longer Ecology of Social Movements Training - redesigning it as a week-long course. It is a training for experienced activists and organisers involved in movement level thinking and practice. Participants will engage in deep analysis of their own movement practice and ecology. They will gain skills and understanding to make their activism and organising more powerful and transformative.

Activist educators play a valuable role in social movements, increasing the capacity for effective social action. They can be catalysts for innovation in social movements, communicating and spreading new approaches, frameworks and tools. This work helps us to learn from each other’s struggles. This gathering will build collaboration and learning between activist educators – spreading new curriculum and practices across different social movements, cultures and countries.

This is a week-long community of inquiry supporting deep reflection into diversity and inclusion in society. The gathering will strengthen our capacity to create social practices that honour diversity, embrace pluralism, and enable us to live creatively with difference. We will deepen our understanding of ‘othering’ – as psychological dynamic, social practice, and driver of ideological formations.

This is a deep inquiry into social change and our role within it. We’ll reflect on lessons from social movement history. We’ll study theories of social change. We’ll share experience. We’ll bring our learning into relationship with systems thinking and theories of complexity. We’ll ask: How can all that dynamize our organising today?

This week long event will bring together a group of richly talented facilitators and practitioners to share and explore creative tools that can be used in a variety of social change settings. It will take a cross/multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on theatre, story, image, dance, and music – and apply these to community empowerment, campaign development, and direct action.

This Training for Trainers aims to support activist-trainers who want to develop and deliver trainings on sustainable activism. The Sustaining Resistance project was established in 2009 and since then we’ve learnt alot. Through this training, we hope to share the experience we have gained, provide useful tools and methods, and bring people together to discuss, share and develop ways of promoting sustainable and effective approaches to activism.

In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in agile and decentralised approaches to self-organising structures. Drawing on systems thinking, information theory, and notions of agility, these approaches have revolutionised practice in traditional organisations. What can we learn from these approaches that can be harnessed to the values we want to embody? How can we better design our organisations for resilience, agility, and impact?

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. The workshop is specifically designed to address needs, issues and challenges that people identifying as trans*, gender non-conforming or non-binary face in their activism.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

Mindfulness is about being fully present in the here and now, being in touch with what is going on inside us and around us. It enables us to arrive in a place of centred awareness – able to be responsive and connected, to engage courageously and effectively in the world. On this training we seek to harness the empowering skills of mindfulness to values and action for social and ecological justice.

This is a training for trainers, organisers and activists, who want to build and deepen their skills for empowering active and critical citizenship. The course offers the opportunities to explore a range of theories, models, and practices that can be used to help individuals, communities and organisations find the inspiration, courage and understanding they need to take back control of their own lives.

Theatre of the Oppressed is a potent tool in the facilitation of group work, community empowerment, and the holding of liberatory conversations. This training will enable you to explore the forms and tools, get skilled-up and confident in applying them, and to share them with others.

To increase the reach of our Transformative Collaboration course, we are now offering a training for trainers version. It will support trainers and facilitators who want to learn methods and tools for running courses and workshops that can empower effective collaboration.

This week long event will bring together a group of richly talented facilitators and practitioners to share and explore creative tools that can be used in a variety of social change settings. It will take a cross/multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on theatre, story, image, dance, and music – and apply these to community empowerment, campaign development, and direct action.

This is a training for trainers, organisers and activists, who want to build and deepen their skills for empowering active and critical citizenship. The course offers the opportunities to explore a range of theories, models, and practices that can be used to help individuals, communities and organisations find the inspiration, courage and understanding they need to take back control of their own lives.

Building on Theatre of the Oppressed training, this course is designed to enrich and enhance participants confidence, experience and abilities with Boal's method of theatre and therapy – the Rainbow of Desire – and the opportunity to analyse, deconstruct and embody the central and enigmatic role of the Joker.

This training is a collaboration between Reboot the Roots and the Ulex Project, hosted at High Heathercombe in the UK. Theatre of the Oppressed is a potent tool in the facilitation of group work, community empowerment, and the holding of liberatory conversations. This training will enable you to explore the forms and tools, get skilled-up and confident in applying them, and to share them with others.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

This is a week-long community of inquiry supporting deep reflection into diversity and inclusion in society. The gathering will strengthen our capacity to create social practices that honour diversity, embrace pluralism, and enable us to live creatively with difference. We will deepen our understanding of ‘othering’ – as psychological dynamic, social practice, and driver of ideological formations.

Este taller tiene como objetivo laborar con los factores personales y colectivos que pueden influir en la capacidad transformadora y la salud de nuestros grupos, así como en la sostenibilidad personal en lo que hacemos.

This is a deep inquiry into social change and our role within it. We’ll reflect on lessons from social movement history. We’ll study theories of social change. We’ll share experience. We’ll bring our learning into relationship with systems thinking and theories of complexity. We’ll ask: How can all that dynamize our organising today?

In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in agile and decentralised approaches to self-organising structures. Drawing on systems thinking, information theory, and notions of agility, these approaches have revolutionised practice in traditional organisations. What can we learn from these approaches that can be harnessed to the values we want to embody? How can we better design our organisations for resilience, agility, and impact?

Mindfulness is about being fully present in the here and now, being in touch with what is going on inside us and around us. It enables us to arrive in a place of centred awareness – able to be responsive and connected, to engage courageously and effectively in the world. On this training we seek to harness the empowering skills of mindfulness to values and action for social and ecological justice.

This Training for Trainers aims to support activist-trainers who want to develop and deliver trainings on sustainable activism. The Sustaining Resistance project was established in 2009 and since then we’ve learnt alot. Through this training, we hope to share the experience we have gained, provide useful tools and methods, and bring people together to discuss, share and develop ways of promoting sustainable and effective approaches to activism.

Activists, human rights defenders, and political organisers can suffer attacks at the hands of both State and non-State actors seeking to hinder their work. This damages our effectiveness and the wellbeing of ourselves and those around us. Such attacks can deter and hinder efforts towards greater social justice and ecological integrity. This training offers methods of analysis, strategy and implementation to protect spaces for activism and resistance.

This week long event will bring together a group of richly talented facilitators and practitioners to share and explore creative tools that can be used in a variety of social change settings. It will take a cross/multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on theatre, story, image, dance, and music – and apply these to community empowerment, campaign development, and direct action.

Theatre of the Oppressed is a potent tool in the facilitation of group work, community empowerment, and the holding of liberatory conversations. This training will enable you to explore the forms and tools, get skilled-up and confident in applying them, and to share them with others.

Many people involved in socially engaged work – activism, human rights defence, and political organising – encounter violence and repression, and the accumulative influence of stresses. This can exert a strong influence on our wellbeing, our work and lives. Knowing how to work well with trauma, to transform, mitigate and grow beyond it, can be crucial for the longevity of our activism and our groups.

This week long event will bring together a group of richly talented facilitators and practitioners to share and explore creative tools that can be used in a variety of social change settings. It will take a cross/multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on theatre, story, image, dance, and music – and apply these to community empowerment, campaign development, and direct action.

Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, conflicts arise. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. It’s a basis for effectiveness, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we can barely imagine. Collaboration is a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to embody our deepest values.

A range of tools, collective and personal, which can make our activism more effective and sustainable. They can help us avoid burnout and add continuity to our movement building. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can organise in ways that actually renew or revitalize our own resources and those of our groups – this can help us stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our tactical approach.

This is a training for trainers, organisers and activists, who want to build and deepen their skills for empowering active and critical citizenship. The course offers the opportunities to explore a range of theories, models, and practices that can be used to help individuals, communities and organisations find the inspiration, courage and understanding they need to take back control of their own lives.